Yesterday, T-Mobile made the decision to axe 1,900 workers in the U.S. Most of the layoffs will come from call centers located in Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and Oregon.

T-Mobile USA CEO and President Philipp Humm explained, "These are not easy steps to take — or, I know, to read. We must address our business realities so we can focus on getting T-Mobile back to growth."

AT&T, which has a serious axe to grind following the failure of its acquisition of T-Mobile, took the opportunity to kick some mud in the face of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Jim Cicconi, AT&T's Senior Executive Vice President of External and Legislative Affairs, made it clear that had the merger gone through, the jobs at T-Mobile's call centers would have been preserved.

"Only a few months ago AT&T promised to preserve these very same call centers and jobs if our merger was approved," Cicconi chided. "We also predicted that if the merger failed, T-Mobile would be forced into major layoffs."

Cicconi didn't stop there, however. He continued his rant against the FCC and didn't hold back any punches:

The FCC argued that the merger would cost jobs, not preserve them, and that rejecting it would save jobs. In short, the FCC said they were right, we were wrong, and did so in an aggressive and adamant way.

Rarely are a regulatory agency’s predictive judgments proven so wrong so fast. But for the government’s decision, centers now being closed would be staying open, workers now facing layoffs would have job guarantees, and communities facing turmoil would have security.

So what’s the lesson here? For one thing, it’s a reminder of why “regulatory humility” should be more than a slogan. The FCC may consider itself an expert agency on telecom, but it is not omniscient. And when it ventures far afield from technical issues, and into judgments about employment or predictions about business decisions, it has often been wildly wrong. The other lesson is even more important, and should be sobering. It is a reminder that in government, as in life, decisions have consequences.

It's understandable why AT&T is still fuming mad over the loss of T-Mobile. The company had to pay a $4 billion USD "breakup fee" when it decided to walk away from the table after the FCC made it clear that the acquisition wouldn't be approved. For its part, T-Mobile reported that it lost 700,000 customers in Q4 2011. Philipp blamed the lost of customers on its inability to obtain Apple's popular iPhone 4S for its network.

quote: Your ignorance and/or denial of the role that the U.S. government has played in the innovation and growth of infrastructure and technology is astonishing.

Derp derp derp.

Never said the government wasn't good at various sorts of research and development that the private sector isn't always capable of undertaking. You're putting words in my mouth, a favorite troll tactic when you've got a weak record to run on yourself. I mention companies providing goods and services, you mention DARPANET. Two entirely different sorts of things. Coming up with DARPANET isn't at all the same as rolling out an ISP in a metro area.

Again, go back to history (you know, the things that happened prior to Bill Clinton). Name some government owned and operated firms in the US that's not a natural monopoly that is world-beating in terms of competitiveness. Even look around the world; government-backed firms often do well thanks to subsidies, government-granted monopolies, etc. State-owned oil companies, with only a few exceptions like Statoil, aren't nearly as effective as their private-sector kin, often hiring Exxon and the like to tell them how they should be doing things. Over the long run, even the most successful state-owned enterprise in history, East India Company, collapses under its own weight and the inherent inefficiencies of mixing state and private sector powers and goals.

As for having a say in what is done with spectrum, again, you have no clue at all what you're talking about; like putting words in ones mouth, thats another plague of liberals like you. Auctions of public resources often come with contractual stipulations pertaining to its use, so the public does have its chance to control how it's used. If they don't live up to how they've agreed to use it, then the government is often within its rights to claw it back, be it spectrum or mineral rights or fisheries. Changing the terms after happily taking investors money is a violation of contract law, which lowers us to the level of communists, fascists and crony-capitalists, something most people have long understood to be a bad thing for an economy. Maybe liberals one day will understand that, too.

Tl;dr: Do you know anything about whats being debated, or you just winging it based on what Bill Maher told you?

quote: Never said the government wasn't good at various sorts of research and development that the private sector isn't always capable of undertaking. You're putting words in my mouth, a favorite troll tactic when you've got a weak record to run on yourself.

Cheap labor conservatives just love to fight for their corporate masters. You're going to have to do better than that.

You just got through making fun of government growth and innovation, and you come back with "I never said that"? Apparently, you right wing corporate lackeys have very short term memories, because you guys constantly forget how badly GOP presidents screw up the country. We liberals spend most of our time in office cleaning up the messes the GOP made.

I'd rather be a tax and spend liberal that balances the budget, than a borrow and spend conservative that bankrupts the country. You guys like to bash the government and claim it's the cause of all our woes, but maybe it wouldn't be if the GOP wasn't always trying to wreck it. It seems that based on my comment rating compared to yours, others would too. I may be a troll, but I've got more rational people that agree with me than you do.

I would love to see you prove that one. I have some pretty hardcore irrefutable numbers that show we're in a bigger mess now than we've EVER been in.

You know, it sure seems like this country started going to shit in 2006. Just when Liberal Democrats won a sweeping majority in Congress in both house and senate. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence, right?

quote: I'd rather be a tax and spend liberal that balances the budget, than a borrow and spend conservative that bankrupts the country.

What this Administration is doing is worst than all of the above. Obama has monetized our debt. Giving a somewhat false sense of security now, but a whole lot of pain later. Budget balancing? HAHAH, man, you idiots kill me!

quote: I'd rather be a tax and spend liberal that balances the budget, than a borrow and spend conservative that bankrupts the country.

We're now at $15.1 trillion in debt under three years of Obama, and four years of Democrats running both chambers of Congress from 2006-2010. Things like a near trillion dollar stimulus bill rammed through Congress in 2009 and signed by Obama that went to all kinds of rediculous local porkulus projects, let alone Big Green Energy failures like Solyndra. And then there's that monstrocity Obamacare that was promised to "only" cost $900 billion which the CBO recently upped the cost estimate to $1.7 trillion.

If that's your idea of a "tax and spend liberal that balances the budget" I'd hate to see what you call a big spending liberal. Yeesh.